


the duty of a rat is to eat

by floraphone



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cannibalism, Captivity, Gen, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Meld, Starvation, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 05:37:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16423418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floraphone/pseuds/floraphone
Summary: “It’s been two weeks since Drake knocked him out, locked him in this hellhole, and Eddie Brock is starving.”AU where Riot doesn’t fuse with Carlton Drake and Venom doesn’t un-fuse with Eddie Brock.





	the duty of a rat is to eat

It’s been two weeks since Drake knocked him out, locked him in this hellhole, and Eddie Brock is starving. 

Eddie knows it’s been two weeks because that’s what Drake is whispering into the intercom, his voice dripping with a sort of sickly awe and reverence that reminds him what pathetic wimpy losers all populate this shitty rock - no. It reminds him what a monster Carlton Drake is, how warped his values have become. Eddie would quite like to shut him up, swallow his tongue. 

“You’ve lasted longer than so many of those that have gone before you.” Drake’s voice is hush and loud - quiet, but projected with too much force into the small glass room that they’ve been keeping Eddie in. “It’s truly fate that brought you to me, Eddie.” 

Today, Eddie stays curled up in the floor in the corner, letting Drake’s voice wash over him until eventually Drake’s voice goes away. A different day he might have argued or fought or pleaded for his life, but today he is too tired to leave the dirty corner he’s chosen to lie in. Instead, he focuses on the feeling of lumpy kneecaps under his fingertips, bones prominent and easy to map through the thin material of his hospital dress. The monster - Venom - glares at him through the glass, but Eddie’s discovered deep inside of himself a well of apathy so bottomless that Venom’s wrath can’t even touch him. 

It’s familiar, somehow. The glass and white walls, Drake’s voice booming through speakers. The hunger, too, and the helpless frustration that comes from knowing there’s no way to satiate it except by eating himself alive. He’d rather be chasing down prey, eating whole hunks of fresh meat by the pound - especially the heads. But trapped like he is, tortured by noise and heat and hunger, all he can do is eat and eat and eat until there’s nothing left worth eating. 

He’s been here before - yelling, fighting, not fighting, giving up. He’s beat at this very wall and stared at this very wall and died against this very wall, curled up in the same corner, more times than he can count. 

All of a sudden Eddie can see himself from the outside, listless and staring at the wall with dead eyes, curled up lightly with his arms around his knees. The image is superimposed against Maria, her back to this same corner, an arm clenched around her gut as she fought through hunger pains and tried not to throw up blood. He can feel the press of her arm against her midsection, the only feeling that mattered in that moment being the tremendous pain there where the monster inside her had eaten away at the lining of her stomach. 

It’s familiar but at the same time it’s not because Eddie _never experienced those things_. 

_I’m going to die here,_ Eddie realizes. Just like Maria, just like all of Venom’s previous hosts, just like all those other subjects that Drake managed to get his hands on in the past and will manage to get his hands on in the future. _I’m going to die because I couldn’t let go of one stupid news story._

The voice in his head stirs. It used to say things like _I will keep you alive_ and _I won’t let you die_. This time it says **You are going to die because you are weak.**

“Yeah,” Eddie mutters, eyes fluttering shut. “Sounds about right.” 

There’s a wrenching feeling in his chest, and then Eddie’s hacking, coughing. He lets it happen even though it hurts, a burn like acid eating away at places deep inside him. He keeps coughing, unable to get a full breath in as the ache moves through his thoracic cavity down to his abdomen - every inhale catches on something, triggering a painful cough reflex that Eddie lacks the willpower to fight. 

Eddie tries to pretend that he doesn’t care, ignoring the bursts of flavor lighting up his tongue - metal and salt, warm and good. _I'm a dead man walking anyways_ , he thinks. 

He doesn't say it, but Eddie’s pretty sure that Venom’s given up on him. Communication’s been reduced to primitive urges and the occasional blunt statement - no comments on Eddie’s personal life, cryptic plans for the future, or little jokes. 

By the time his coughing fit ends, there’s a spray of blood in front of him on the glass, distorting his human reflection. His eyes are half-lidded and his face is gaunt. He looks like shit. 

_Soon I’ll be alien shit_ , Eddie thinks, somewhat hysterically. _If aliens even shit._

Eddie knows he’s starving because that’s what the voice in head is whispering into his ear, an endless cacophony of hunger, hunger, hunger. Eddie knows he’s starving because he can feel it eating away at his insides - the voice in his ear manifesting its displeasure by burning him from the inside out. 

Worse, Eddie knows he’s starving because he can feel it in his own gut, too. No matter how much they feed him, he nevertheless feels ravenous in fits and starts, his rational mind overtaken by cravings so intense they drive him to beat his own fists bloody against the thick glass separating him from Drake. In those moments he can hear himself snarling like an animal, making sounds no human throat should be able to make.

He's going to die, and all he wants - more that being free, more than Anne, more than having this shitty alien out of his head - all he wants is a fucking hamburger. Abruptly, Eddie is laughing - a haggard sound that hurts through the damage Venom is doing to his lungs. Is it him or the alien laughing? Eddie can't tell.

Impulsively, he jerks his head forward, licking his own blood off the window and relishing the taste. There’s a part of Eddie that hates himself for doing it; nevertheless his stomach - or something in his stomach - gurgles, desperate for more.

* * *

“I'm disappointed in you, Eddie,” Drake is saying. “Lung failure? Liver failure? You’re not being a very good host for our... guest.”

Eddie shifts slightly, sore eyes locking onto Drake from out the shelter of the arm he’d thrown over his head at some point in a vain attempt to shield his face from the glaring overhead lights. Drake looks - nourished. A little thin, but there’s enough meat on his bones and a healthy look to his skin. Eddie tries to sneer at him, but he can feel his face contort into something more like a hoarse snarl.

The movement irritates his throat. Eddie fights to suppress a coughing fit, taking short, wet breaths through his nose. 

_ Can’t breathe, can’t breathe. _

Drake keeps talking, but it’s hard to focus on what he’s saying - Eddie is tired and hurting and hungry, and so is Venom. Imagining ripping Drake’s head off and gobbling it up appeals to them on multiple levels, a fantasy too appealing to ignore.

“I think I know just what’ll cheer you up,” Drake says, finally. He motions with his head, and from behind Eddie they hear the sound of pneumatic doors opening.

Eddie and Venom whip around, tense in the anticipation of something awful. He can feel his muscles spasm unconsciously, trembling with adrenaline, weakness, and Venom’s alien whatever pooling under his skin. Somehow, Eddie doubts whatever Drake has in store for them will cheer them up much. As the secondary set of doors hiss open, they crouch low, readying themselves for a pounce.

They smell it before they see it - warm, fresh blood, and a lot of it. Eddie’s stomach growls and Venom growls and for a moment Eddie can’t tell which is which. It drowns him out, the hunger and Venom’s bulk both, until he’s totally encased in it - nothing left of Eddie Brock facing outwards except for a spark of will screaming  _ stop, stop, stop  _ and  _ go, go go! _

Venom leaps with the precision of an apex predator, landing on something warm and alive and bleeding. It’s then that they see it’s a woman, screaming hoarsely through a massive gash in her throat. She fights back weakly - just enough to excite Venom’s predatory instincts, but not enough to pose an actual threat. 

As though anything human could pose a threat to Venom.  _Those machines that make that sound_ , Eddie thinks as they lean down to inhale the glorious smell of her meat. _ Those scientists in their lab coats. Carlton Drake. _

There’s a moment where Eddie pauses, looks down into the woman’s wild, dying eyes, and sees his own monstrous reflection - teeth bared in a vicious grin, thick drool leaking out in viscous strings. His eyes are wide and red. He looks insane.

It’s not Venom’s face he’s seeing.

There’s a shame there that Eddie’s too frenzied to indulge. Instead he roars, angry at Drake for tempting him, angry at himself for giving in, and taking it out on this poor girl instead.

Deep under Venom’s bulk, Eddie’s organs are rotting away. Worse, he feels like he hasn't eaten in a year. Most of his free time is spent thinking about eating a good hamburger or eating Drake; in his brief snatches of sleep he dreams about deep throating raw sticks of butter and the feeling of warm brains under his tongue. At this point he would do anything for a good meal. _Anything_ , he’s realizing - anything at all. 

Satiation seems a distant dream, painlessness even further. If this is what it takes to feel full, finally full... 

They bite down while she’s still alive, cutting off the frantic, choked noises she’s started making. Deep in their body, they can feel Eddie’s eyes rolling up into his skull at the taste, a vibration in his throat that comes out of their mouth as a deep purr. 

There’s so much blood everywhere, and it’s all so _good_. 

They finish off the rest of the meat while it’s still fresh. It’s not quite enough, but it’s better than the nothing they’ve been subsisting on. They work fast, afterwards turning to where Carlton Drake had been standing.

He’s still there, fingertips pressed against the glass. His eyes are wide, his mouth parted slightly in an awed smile. They stalk over to him, using the added height of Venom’s bulk to look down on him menacingly.

“Beautiful,” Drake mouths. “Do you feel better, my sweet?”

With their renewed strength, they want to throw themselves against the glass over and over again, roar, make the scientists and Drake afraid. But that would be a waste of energy, so they don’t do that. 

**_You will be my “sweet” soon_** , they think. They drag a clawed hand down to where Drake’s is pressed, making gouges into the glass and leaving a bloody palm print mirroring Drake’s own palm. **_This will be you soon_. ** The thought makes them smile.

_ We can still escape,  _ Eddie thinks.  _ Anne will rescue us. Somehow we’re getting out of here - we have to_. 

**_We_ will escape, ** Venom thinks, hauty. **_We_ will save _your_ stupid life, Eddie.**

* * *

After Drake leaves, Venom recedes his bulk from around Eddie, leaving them - leaving him shivering and cold under the harsh lights of Drake’s observation room. He takes a moment to relish in the feeling of inhaling to full capacity without coughing - it feels like his first real breath in a long time. He’d forgotten how easy it used to be, how nice. 

Moreover, Eddie just feels _better_. The strange curtain of despair that has shrouded his mind for the past few days has receded, allowing him to imagine a future where he’s out of this place - where Drake is dead (maybe eaten - _maybe_ ), Anne and him are on good terms, and as for employment - well, for better or worse, Eddie is living proof of Drake’s less than ethical methods. 

Venom also seems more - not cheerful, but more  _ itself _ than it had been. And all it took -

All it took was eating some poor woman alive.

_She was going to die anyways_ , Eddie tries to rationalize. He wishes he were nauseous, but he feels good - at least compared to how he felt before. 

**We’re so hungry,** Venom says in the relative privacy of their shared brain. There’s a pause.  **We don’t want Eddie to die.**

“Sure, buddy,” Eddie says out loud. He tries not to think about how Carlton Drake is definitely going to do that again, put some poor helpless bystander directly in the path of a dangerous predator - himself. Tries not to think about the jolt of excitement that he feels at the thought - a feeling he’s not sure if comes from Venom or himself.

It worries him that he can still sense it - a chemical hopelessness creeping at the edges of his consciousness, a hunger that makes him want to hunt, kill, eat. He still feels...

It’s been two weeks since Drake knocked him out, locked him in this hellhole, and Eddie Brock is starving. He barely feels human.

**Author's Note:**

> Only saw the movie once a couple days ago, so please forgive me for any canon inconsistencies.


End file.
